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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

On Jul 25, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

> > > This article seems as lucid and balanced as any I have read in the
> > last year:
>
> Good article, yes, lucid, but I'm having trouble seeing it as  
> 'balanced'.  It
> is, I'd say from my other readings on the subject, accurate, but  
> balancing
> what with what?

I found the author to be neither unduly optimistic nor unduly  
pessimistic. I find that to be balanced. Nobody, repeat many times,  
nobody, nobody knows for sure what the future of the world, the  
country, the economy will do, nor the areas of energy, finance, real  
estate, manufacturing, etc., not to mention population and natural  
conditions numerous and well known. Many people are qualified to make  
educated guesses. Many do enough research and have sufficient common  
sense to make plausible predictions. No one knows what's going to  
happen. You choose your expert and make your investment. The balanced  
view is that things may become better or they may become worse. Some  
find only one possibility. You, James, appear to be in the latter  
camp. We must therefore conclude that you are unbalanced. You would  
possibly agree. Yes? No?
> But the same people that correctly (uncancannily

I like the new word. May I use it sometime? With attribution, of course.

> correctly) predicted the
> current debacle when the cheerleaders and whistlers-past-the- 
> graveyard, were
> eternally predicting the bottom ... those same peple are now  
> suggesting there may
> be no bottom!

If that is so, then in the case of those individuals, mania prevails  
and common sense has fled the field. The economies of the developed  
countries of the world have long waxed and waned. I am unable to think  
of any major country whose economy has sunk to no bottom, just eternal  
sinking.

New houses are now sitting empty for a long time, even here in the  
backwater.
> In some places they are succumbing to vandals and the elements  
> they've been
> standing unoccupied so long.

New houses in many areas are sitting empty for long periods. The  
developers and builders and financial backers of those homes made bad  
decisions. That often happens in a free, capitalist society. There are  
parallels in many economic areas.
>   The paradigm is shifting.  Before the only pattern we could see
> is that "new households" would inevitably form as people retired,  
> grown
> children moved out, immigrants came in, people bought secong  
> homes .. etc. etc. etc.
> But it looks as though that isn't happening.  Households are  
> consoldating
> much faster than they are forming.
>
> That is, many of these houses may *never* sell.

In some areas migration will only be outward for a long time. This has  
happened in many rural areas before. In those areas, many homes may  
well not sell for a very long time. Some may one day simply be  
recycled. You, James, should feel fortunate that you live in such a  
depressed area.
> So there may be no acutal balance to the story.  Like Tevye in  
> "Fiddler on
> the Roof" when he examined the question deeply enough, we may be  
> concluding that
> "There is on other hand!"


Tevye was too pessimistic about his optimism. Taken far enough, that  
attitude can be fatal.

Expect change and you will not be disappointed.